Radial Engineering

“We’re very fortunate,” says Peter Janis, founder and CEO of Radial Engineering. “Our sales channels are global, and we’ve got some pretty heavy hitters out there using and representing our products throughout the world. There are a lot of people down right now but we’re actually up over last year.”

Janis is convinced that Radial’s success lies in the fact that they’re selling products “that people need as opposed to products that people want. Bands are going to have less people showing up — instead of a full club, they’ve got 80 percent filled so they have to make cuts. Nevertheless, they still have to bring the snare drum, they still need all the mics and they still have to have DIs. We provide all the tools to make the show happen and because we sell all that kind of gear, we’re not as vulnerable as someone selling a specialty item.”

Following their most profitable year to date, Radial is hoping to grow even more. “We’re just so busy — it’s non stop everyday,” explains Janis. “I was just on the phone with one of our major customers yesterday and the word from them was that we’re one of the few companies that are on the plus side of the scale.”

In fact, Radial has done so well that they recently expanded their operations. “We were in a 10,000 sq. ft. facility two blocks up the street,” says Janis. “The Primacoustic panels were so big that we needed a separate warehouse and it got to a point where we simply ran out of space.” In January, the company moved into a brand new 25,000 sq. ft. facility and invested in four Remstar Shuttles. “Basically, they’re inventory robots,” says Janis. “They’re all computer controlled which allows us to ship much more quickly and efficiently. Instead of having people running all over the place the, inventory is running to you.”

Radial wasn’t always a huge operation. In fact, the company got its start in the early 1990s building cable products. “Actually, the Radial logo is a piece of cable, that’s been cut,” laughs Janis. “We were importing cables and transformers into the Canadian market to supply recording studios when low and behold the Internet hit. The next thing you know, we were begging — trying to compete with the whole North American thing.”

At the same time, more and more customers were having Radial build custom systems. “It turned out that the big touring companies could no longer sustain having a tech on hand. We would build snake systems for them instead of just selling raw cable and transformers and the next thing you know we were being asked to build direct boxes. So, in 1996 we launched our first DI box called the Radial JDI which today is pretty much the de facto standard in professional touring.” By the end of the 1990s Radial had transferred from distribution to production and today has four distinct groups of products: Direct Boxes, Tonebone Pedals, Primacoustic and our custom cable division.

Kevin Burgin, Drake Williams, and the Komit
“We’re really excited about having Kevin and Drake join our engineering team from the Rupert Neve Designs,” says Janis. “Drake, contacted us because we had put out word through the industry that we were looking for help. He told us that Kevin might be interested in getting involved and one thing led to another. We flew the guys up to Vancouver and spent a few days chatting and it just fit, simple as that.”

As part of the deal Radial ended up buying Kevin’s flagship product, the ‘Komit’ compressor. “One reason why I was excited about these guys, was their 500 series lunchbox module,” explains Janis. “We looked at the market and felt there is a tremendous opportunity at hand. We also noticed that some of the rack housings out there are not very good and no one has ever taken the time to just fix it. We’re building a platform from which a whole bunch of these modules can be used.” These modules will be backwards compatible with the older 500 series. “You might get a guy that bought a little 500 module back in the ’70s and now he’ll be able to plug it into this device. If I want to put a little mic preamp on my voice and I don’t like the sound, I pull one out and I slide another one in.” Janis thinks they can make these products at a good price and believes that “they’ll be a lot of fun — just like guitar pedals. Musicians mess around with pedals like girls mess around with dresses,” laughs Janis. “We’ve got four of em’ already in development and a fifth quickly to follow.” He’s hoping to have at least a dozen modules out by the end of the year. “It’ll just be fun stuff. I mean, isn’t that what it’s all about? The device should be inspiring and if it doesn’t do that, we’ve missed my mark.”

Hitting the Mark
When developing new products, Radial calls on industry pros. “We’re very fortunate, in that we’ve probably got the biggest user list in the industry,” explains Janis. “That doesn’t happen by accident, it happens for two reasons. One is that you make a good product and the next thing is that you have to be working real hard communicating with these artists and their technicians to make sure that you understand and fulfill their needs.”

“I met with Joe Satriani last week to show him our new switcher,” says Janis. In developing the new switcher, Janis called in Carlos Santana and Joe Perry. The new device “allows bands to use multiple guitars and multiple amplifiers on stage,” explains Janis. “We won’t sell a lot of these, but there are clients out there that want that kind of cool stuff and we’re really trying to push the envelope of coming up with innovative solutions.”

Recently, when Fleetwood Mac came to Vancouver, all of the technicians came through for a tour. While at the Radial facility, Janis “talked with the techs about what they needed. Those same technicians that worked this tour will jump over to another tour and deal with all kinds of problems there,” explains Janis. “We’re always going back to the technicians. Then we develop the technology and scale it down so that it’s more affordable for stores to be able to use — that tends to be the flow. I think that’s what makes us different from the average company, we’re not just making a speaker cabinet with a 15” speaker and a horn. We’re doing stuff that’s outside the box. I think that that’s a really strong opportunity for us and our dealers are enjoying it because we deliver solutions.”

DI Boxes
“No one ever paid attention to the DI box business until we came along,” says Janis. “The next thing you know, we’re the number one player in DI boxes. Last year alone, we shipped over 50,000 units.” Radial’s two most popular DI boxes are the JDI and J48. The JDI is their original passive DI while the J48 is an active DI box with an internal switching supply which allows it to handle “more signal”. Janis explains that “it’s got more dynamic headroom which makes it a very good product when you spec it verses anything else on the market as most other designs haven’t changed in 20 years.”

Primacoustic
“On a global level, we’re probably the fastest growing acoustics company in the industry, says Janis. Created out of “sheer frustration” with the acoustics industry, Primacoustic is Radials acoustic solutions branch. “During the 90′s when we were importing acoustical products to the Canadian market, we would go to these distributor meetings and they would start talking about acoustics for use around A/C equipment, or sound control for Volkswagens and our interests were in studio applications. So, we started our own brand called Primacoustic and focused our energy on the home studio market.” Primacoustic provides a whole range of acoustical solutions from acoustical panels to Recoil Stabilizers, but it’s the room kits that have really caught on. “The London room Kit is our most popular acoustic product. It retails for $600 and does a complete studio.” Since first creating Primacoustic, Janis has expanded his operations “towards the whole contractor/installation market. All you need to do is look up and see the acoustic ceiling tiles,” laughs Janis. “Acoustics are usually sold through guys that sell sheetrock! They haven’t a clue! These guys know about hammers but they don’t know anything about sound. Most music stores have someone that is pretty sound savvy and that’s a huge advantage.” Janis tells us that there are quite a few dealers that are keyed into this market and doing “tremendously well.”

Tonebone Pedals
The Tonebone series began with “high end tube distortion pedals such as the Tonebone Classic and the Tonebone Hot British,” says Janis. “From there we started to expand our Tonebone range in a very interesting way. There are probably 200 manufactures of distortion pedals out there and back in 2000 we could see the market place becoming more and more jammed. So while everyone else zigged we zagged and put our energy into developing products that were very different from anyone else.” Radial turned its focus more towards the switching capabilities of pedals and today they produce a “whole range of solution boxes to address the professionals needs on stage.” Products such as the Cabbone, Headbone and Loopbone have made the tone bone series very successful. “Santana, Clapton, Satriani– the list of users of those products today is just huge,” says Janis.

Bones Pedals
Radials newest addition to its guitar related products are its Bones series. “We’ve put a couple of years into R&D and essentially took our tube pedals and miniaturized them to get the footprint as small as possible.” To do so, Radial has used Surface Mount Technology to shrink the popular Tonebone series into the newer Bones pedals. “Our Tonebone product has been quite successful but the problem with our higher end pedals is that the average store doesn’t have the client base to sell a three or four hundred dollar pedal,” explains Janis. In addition, many customers wanted a more compact pedal that ran off a standard 9V power supply. “So we miniaturize the Tonebones and brought them down in both size and price without losing too much functionality and keeping production here in North America.” Janis explains that the new Bones pedals still have “dual function — you’ve got clean, rhythm and lead happening which really does make it nice for stage work. And, at $199 retail, we’re more in the affordable range that allows the average store to get involved. We worked really hard at doing that with those pedals,” says Janis. “They’re getting a lot of really positive press and feedback by people that have used them.”